A mother whose desperately ill baby was treated at Leeds General Infirmary’s children’s heart centre told how she believed his life was only saved when she insisted on transferring him to another unit.

All children’s heart surgery was suspended at the hospital last week, after mortality rates were said to be twice the national average. This followed The Mail on Sunday’s story last week exposing the scandal.

Hollie Pearson, 19, watched her son George’s condition steadily worsen after he was born 14 months ago in Leeds with four heart defects.

Hollie had been told that her baby George could never be cured by Leeds Hospital. But, when she moved him to Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, they said his heart condition could be fixed

After an operation at eight weeks old, George was placed on a ‘palliative care pathway’, meaning his life could be prolonged but his condition would not be cured.

Hollie and her mother, Nicola Garbutt, 42, became concerned at George’s listless state, frequent breathlessness and bluish pallor, but trusted the doctors caring for him.

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But in January 2013, Hollie’s elder sister Emily, 22, home from university, urged her mother: ‘Mum, act quickly please, George looks dead.’

Nicola said: ‘I’d done my homework and spoken to other parents and they just told me to get him to Newcastle, so that’s what I did.

‘I insisted to LGI that they transfer him. Although they did try and put us off and said it was a bad idea because it could take days for all the notes to be sent, they did refer him there.

Hollie with her son George. The mother said that his personality has come out since receiving treatment in Newcastle

‘But my point is that patients shouldn’t have to push for that – they should always be offered a second opinion somewhere else in complicated cases.’

Just two days after he arrived at Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, George’s astonished family were told his poorly heart could be fixed.

Nicola said: ‘At this point we had lived a year knowing George was on palliative care only. The thought he could be taken away at any time is any parent’s nightmare.’

Hollie, a student nurse from Skipton, North Yorkshire, whose studies were put on hold by George’s arrival, said the transformation in her son since his operation was amazing.

‘I’ve really got to know him in the last few weeks and he’s developed a personality which you couldn’t really see before as he was always crying or asleep. He’s a different boy and I’m so glad my mum pushed for us to be transferred.’ This week George, who has had to be fed through a tube all his short life, will have it removed from his nose for the first time as he gets stronger.

Mrs Garbutt added: ‘I wasn’t surprised that they suspended operations at Leeds this week, but I do feel for all the children and families waiting for treatment.’ The Mail on Sunday has also learned that a four-year-old girl died at the unit ten days ago after a relatively straightforward procedure to remove muscle from her heart.

The girl’s angry mother wrote on Facebook last week: ‘I will fight to the end to find out who did this to her as the surgeon couldn’t tell me how it happened. I have raised money to keep Leeds open myself and I wish I could take it all back.’

The suspension of operations at Leeds was sparked by a Mail on Sunday inquiry. Last week we reported that one of two consultant surgeons at the unit had been secretly banned from operating.

The hospital’s failure to announce that decision until contacted by the MoS raised questions over the NHS Transparency Agenda, partly brought in following the Bristol heart scandal in which more than 30 children died.

JOHN SENTAMU WANTS A REVIEW OF HEART SURGERY PRACTICES

Archbishop of York Dr. John Sentamu wants Jeremy Hunt to intervene over the Leeds general Hospital scandal

The Archbishop of York has called on Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to intervene over the controversial decision to suspend children's congenital heart surgery at Leeds General Infirmary (LGI).

The hospital is carrying out an internal review after data suggested a death rate twice the national average.

Doubts have been cast over the reliability of the mortality figures after it emerged they did not include scores of operations carried out by the unit.

Dr John Sentamu, who has backed campaigners in their battle to keep children's heart surgery in Leeds, visited the unit today in a 'pilgrimage of prayer and trust'.

Speaking at the hospital, the archbishop asked Mr Hunt to 'speedily' conduct his own review into the unit, which was ordered after opposition to plans to stop surgery in Leeds.

Dr Sentamu told ITV News: 'The data on which it was based to close these surgical procedures needs to be analysed fast and quick.

'If it turns out not to be accurate then somebody's got to come clean about it.

'They should carry out what the court has asked and what the Secretary of State has embarked on and do it speedily and quickly and without any bias at all.

'I'd ask the Secretary of State really to intervene and come in pretty fast.'

Dr Sentamu said he believes medical director of NHS England Sir Bruce Keogh would have "a lot of questions to answer" if the mortality results proved inaccurate.

He added: "All I can say is that if the data and the research hasn't been properly analysed, I would have thought you would have paused, come to the actual clinic and see what's going on.

'I hope Mr Bruce has the facts but if he hasn't then he's got a lot of questions to answer.'

Campaigners have criticised the
suspension of surgery and its timing, which came 24 hours after a High
Court judge ruled the decision-making process to close the children's
unit was 'legally flawed'.

A spokesman from NHS England said
tonight: 'We agree with the trust's decision to launch this review. It
is really important that this review is carried out in a sensible,
effective and decisive way.

'For that to happen it needs to follow a proper and complete process. It cannot be conducted in the media.

'The data and other information that
triggered this precautionary pause have raised questions but they have
not provided answers. That is the job of the review.

'It is important that the review is allowed to do its work properly and reach a decisive conclusion on behalf of patients.'

The surgeon’s suspension, due to ‘concerns over his practice’, left the unit with only one permanent consultant surgeon – who was on holiday – and two locums. Matters were so desperate a surgeon from Denmark had to fly in at weekends. One expert described the unit as ‘dangerously dysfunctional’.

Former heart tsar Professor Sir Roger Boyle, who heads the central unit analysing cardiac mortality data, was informed of the surgeon’s suspension by the MoS last Saturday as Leeds had not announced the move. He alerted NHS chiefs not only to the death rates at the unit, but also the crisis sparked by the suspension.

Sir Roger said: ‘I would not have been able to sleep this weekend knowing that there were people who might have been operated on in a potentially unsafe environment.’

He passed on his concerns to Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of NHS England, who ordered that surgery be suspended on Thursday.

Campaigners have criticised the suspension of surgery and its timing, 24 hours after a High Court judge ruled that the decision-making process to close the children’s unit was ‘legally flawed’.

But the accuracy of the mortality figures has been questioned after it was claimed that the results were preliminary.